The Labour Party's Unseen Influence on Trump's Win

I haven’t seen too many people talk about one angle of the Donald Trump win. They did awfully after getting advice from the Labour Party. You can never tell how much advice they actually listened to Labour advisors like Jonathan Ashworth, but the advice he gave publicly:

He said Democratic operatives were “interested in how we made the arguments [on border security], because they intend to make the same arguments as well.”

“We kept reminding people that he was a hard guy who put people behind bars and foiled terrorist plots,” Ashworth said of Starmer, who — like Harris — is a former prosecutor.

“[Harris], like Keir, is relentlessly pushing this message that she’s a prosecutor who has put criminals behind bars.” – Kamala Harris campaign told how to win by UK Labour strategist

“It’s my job to think through how Labour win a historic second term at the next general election. That’s why I want to learn from campaigns across the world and will be traveling regularly meeting our sister parties fighting elections over the coming years.” – Labour MPs to meet President Joe Biden as team flies to US with advice for Kamala Harris

Ashworth warned his U.S. comrades to develop solid responses on transgender issues, after Labour colleagues faced repeated media questions about whether women can have penises.

“One of the things I was raising in Chicago was how that would become an issue if they weren’t careful,” Ashworth said. – Trump allies rage at UK Labour help for Kamala Harris. There’s more to come.

seemed to fall flat.

Politics is a funny thing. Former MP Jonathan Ashworth lost in his seat in the House of Commons in July’s general election. After the election, he failed upwards to run the Labour think tank, Labour Together. Can a seat in the House of Lords be next?

Ashworth (and friends) gave the advice above to Democrats, and the Harris campaign followed it. It worked out badly. Whether it’s immigration, or trans rights, Democrats did not rally the base, and it couldn’t bring in new voters either. That advice sunk like a rock, it wasn’t good political strategy.

To think Ashworth and Co. are geniuses of the political dark arts is to ignore the historical context of July’s General Election in the UK. The election wasn’t won through strategy, but by the luck of good timing. Politics often relies on the context of the time you’re living in. People who take advantage of the situation and are politically savvy can succeed. Still, Starmer’s strategists have shown they don’t know much.

Keir Starmer won election as leader on lies and that’s continued in government. They’re increasing tuition for students. They’re getting rid of the £2 cap on bus fare. They’re cutting the winter fuel allowance for pensioners. They could bring children out of poverty, but have chosen not to. They’re not doing anything that’s going to materially change people’s actual conditions on the ground. In fact, when polled over half believe Labour will make poverty worse. Yesterday a poll was released showing that the Tories are now leading Labour.

The electorate wasn’t excited about Starmer or Labour’s manifesto. What they were excited about was not having having the Conservative party in government. People’s standard of living is declining, but no one in government is taking action to deal with it. Conservatives were all responsible for that. Labour has no policy positions on the table that will materially change the lives of anyone but the super-rich. They continue to fiddle around the corners of the economy, but they won’t do anything to materially change it.

Many think discussions of wealth distribution like it’s a communist or socialist idea. However, wealth distribution is happening right now, even under Labour. The wealth is going to the top, not the bottom. The most recent bout of inflation wasn’t because of an increase wages, but because of profits.

The rise in inflation has not been driven by anything that looks like an overheating labor market—instead it has been driven by higher corporate profit margins and supply-chain bottlenecks. – Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond?

Democrats lost in large part because they had power and didn’t do anything. Labour is heading down that same path. We are caught in the cycles of elections between two parties neoliberal parties. They are perceived as the only ones that have a real chance of winning. As a result, the only policies you get are neoliberal policies. They don’t make any changes. They only widen the income inequality. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer. Then you have another election. The other party claims to be the party of the people. They promise to implement policies to “make America great again.” Still, they don’t actually have any policies. As Trump amusingly said “I have concepts of a plan.” It turns out the policies they put in place are just more of the same. Rinse and repeat.

We’re only four months into this Labour government and it’s become obvious that we’re on a runaway train to nowhere. I spoke in an earlier post about the four choices we have four choices:

1. Continue your current level of political engagement
2. Fix the party from within
3. Work really hard between now and the next midterm election to try to build third-party power
4. Try to build power outside the political system.

It’s becoming glaringly obvious that three and four are the only rational choices left. These parties exist only to be in power. This applies to both Democrats in the USA and Labour in the UK. They don’t have any answers that will bring any long-term change, that much is clear.